Well I know that footballers and other sports people sometimes get confused and think that they need to put in 110% effort, or even more, but the chief exec of QCA should have a better understanding of what 100% means.

On Monday Dr Boston gave evidence to MPs that 100% of papers had been marked. Not true!

Today QCA said that 100% means “all the material that required marking had been marked” – in the sense that it was known about.

Great, I can claim to have marked all my homework as soon as I know about it!! A hospital can claim that 100% of operations have been completed on time, because they know about them.

What a load of nonsense and it’s about time the whole thing was abandoned and the hundreds of millions of pounds saved should be spent on teaching our young people better parenting skills so that their children arrive at school willing and able to learn.

So, it has been claimed that all the SAT papers have been marked and given to schools – yet reports are still coming in that schools have not received their scores or they are obviously wrong. These included schools in Lancashire, Cheshire, Cambridgeshire, Coventry, Hampshire, Manchester, Dorset, London, Norfolk and Wiltshire.

You might feel that you get too many emails, so just imagine what it would be like to have over 10 000 e-mail enquiries from schools unanswered! Must do better is the phrase that comes to mind and I don’t think that anybody can take the statistics resulting from these tests seriously.Read more

We often assume that once children have gained some confidence with small numbers that they automatically can move on to using larger numbers. This may well not be the case.

Here is a simple maths worksheet which is all about counting on single digits from a 2-digit number. The most obvious way to do this is by counting on in ones from the first number, but the question remains as how do you know how many you have counted on? Usually children will use their fingers. For example count on 6 from 24. Start at 24, count one to 25 and hold thumb out, then 26 for one finger and so on. When one hand and one further finger has been extended then they know that they have counted on 6. Essential to this process is knowing how many fingers you need to count on 6 without actually counting out loud up to 6 (as you are counting out loud from 24 to 30).

Adults presume knowledge of this, but it might be worth checking before starting such an exercise.

The Primary Framework for Mathematics is very keen that young children use their mathematical knowledge to solve problems and investigate. This worksheet gives an idea of the kind of work that can be done. Find 3 boxes and 7 counters or buttons. Explore how many different ways that the counters can be put in the boxes. Usually children will begin a task like this in a random way – the better mathematicians will soon begin to work in a more ordered way.

Help by asking questions such as: If there are 4 buttons in box A how many different ways could the rest of the buttons be put into boxes B and C? The options are 3 and 0, 2 and 1, 1 and 2 and 0 and 3.

Sats test delay
Well the SAT results for our 11 year olds have been delayed – a predictable event. We might think that our children’s test papers are marked by teachers or people employed in education but in fact the contract for marking the tests was awarded to a company called ETS for the next 5 years and it was worth £156 million! ETS has a presence in 42 countries and is the largest private educational measurement service in the world. Despite being such a large organisation there seem to be a number of concerns over the quality of the marking and the time taken.The online publication of the results of tests taken by 11 year olds has been delayed until 15 July, very close to the end of term.Read more.

Here is a straightforward worksheet which is more open ended. It allows the child to find two numbers which add up to 100. Some children will work in a well ordered methodical way eg by adding whole tens 90 + 10, 80 + 20, 70 + 30 etc whilst others will choose a more random approach.